Why I Hated The Guy From The FBI Ch. 09

Jim had a sly smile on his face and Charlie saw it.

Charlie asked him, "Okay, Jim, what is up?"

"Charlie, you made a mistake out in California. It probably was a joke, but Ann told Celeste you said something about doughnuts?"

Charlie said, "That bitch. Now I am going to kill her."

Jim laughed at him and asked, "Which one, Charlie?"

"I am not sure just yet, but I will figure it out before I get there. This is unfair. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It is against the Constitution of the United States to keep a man away from his doughnuts."

"If you can figure another way to lose 15 pounds and keep eating your doughnuts, Charlie, you go for it. However, Ann is going to watch you like a hawk and if you gain 1 pound over 185, she is going to be all over your ass."

"Jim, the last time I was 185, was in high school."

Jim looked at the tailor and said, "Adjust it for 8 pounds, and keep it between us, if you want my business in the future."

"Yes, Mr. Hearst, anything you say."

"Charlie, remember she is going to have a scale in her house."

"Scales can be adjusted, and two can play that game."

"The FBI has trained you well Charlie. Celeste and Ann have a very good friend on their hands."

"I owe Celeste, an awful lot Jim. I owe her my happiness, and my new life. How do you pay somebody back for that?"

"You have already started to do that for her, Charlie. You are protecting her back, by asking me to start working on a prenuptial agreement. You asked for a firearms permit. It is not to protect you, but to protect Ann and Celeste, just in case it is needed. You are going to be an asset to Celeste's circle of friends, and she does not have that many friends."

"Thank you, Jim. At any time, day or nights, if you think she needs us, give me a call, and Ann and I are on our way."

"I will do that Charlie, thank you. Let's go have dinner and the driver will take you home."

31. The First Grandchild

After Rose's aircraft landed at Kennedy airport, she cleared customs and walked out into the terminal area. She was greeted by Tony and three dozen, long stemmed, pink roses. She nearly broke out in tears. He had remembered she loved pink roses. She ran to him and nearly crushed him; ignoring their size differences.

"Rose, you are going to kill your roses!"

"Anthony, I do not care. You remembered that I loved these roses, and that is all I cared about. You have not brought me flowers in so many years; I cannot believe that you remembered."

"I told you before you left Rose, I would do everything in my power to make you happy again. I want to go back to the way we were when we were young. We may not be 20 again, but we are not so old that we cannot rekindle our love and our passion."

"Okay you two; get a room," Vincent said, as he and Donna approached.

Rose turned as her son approached and hugged his mother, and kissed her on her cheek. Donna also took her in her arms and kissed her.

Rose asked Donna how her pregnancy was progressing, because she looked like she was about to give birth at any moment. Donna replied, "I think going to school and concentrating on other things, is helping to distract me from my pregnancy. Vincent's trying to impregnate me again, every night, also takes my mind off the pregnancy. I can see why all the other girls enjoyed him so much. He is an encyclopedia of sexual knowledge. I am very thankful he did not catch a disease while he was at it."

Vincent chided his wife saying, "With all the other girls, I wore a raincoat. You were the one that drove me over the edge. You were the one I adored. You were the one I wanted to marry. Be nice to me, or I will spank you."

Donna looked at him and laughed. "You say that like it would be the first time."

Rose looked at her son with evil in her eyes. "You smacked a pregnant woman? If you touch her again, I am going to hit you with my cast iron pan, right between your eyes."

Tony laughed at his son. He said, "Vincent that black pan will push your nose out the back of your head. She has been making meatballs with that pan, since the day after we returned from our honeymoon. If I were you, I would rethink hitting your wife, even in fun, while she is pregnant."

Vincent's reply was very straightforward. "Yes sir."

Donna looked at Rose and asked, "Do you have an extra one of those pans?"

Rose replied, "Of course, I do. You cannot make meatballs and sausages in the same pan. Would you like it?"

Donna looked at Vincent with a smile on her face and said, "Yes mom, I would love one."

Vincent's reply was, "Oh shit!"

"Vincent, do not worry, I will only use it as a defensive weapon, or to make meatballs. The choice is yours to make. If you are nice, you get meatballs. If you are not nice, you get hit in the balls."

Tony and Rose laughed as Vincent grabbed his crotch holding his family jewels tenderly. He asked Donna how she could be so cruel to her husband.

Donna went over to Rose and asked if she was being cruel.

Vincent looked to his mother for support. As he looked into her eyes, he saw none there. Rose said to him, "A woman has a duty to her husband. She must honor and obey him always. She must never betray his trust. She must never speak to anyone about his work, or his whereabouts. However, if her husband disrespects her in any way she has the right to defend herself, by any means she sees fit. If he has an affair and she finds out about it, she can have an affair, whether he likes it or not. If he wants to go on vacation by himself, she can go on a vacation by herself, also. If he hits her, she can hit him. The man is usually bigger than the woman, so the woman can use anything she wants to even the score. In this case Donna is going to use a cast iron frying pan to get even with you. My advice to you, my son, is not to hit your wife. You never know what she can do to you, while you are asleep."

"Mom, you are scaring me."

"In that case, Vincent, my speech has worked. Keep your fucking hands to yourself."

"Yes mother, can we go to the car now?"

"Lead the way Vincent."

Anthony said to his wife, "Rose, you scared the shit out of the boy."

Rose looked up at her husband and said, "Anthony, in our nearly 22 years of marriage, how many times have you hit me?"

"I have never struck you."

"Liar! She pulled him down, so she could whisper in his ear and said to him, "While we were making love, you were behind me, and you smacked be on my rump."

Anthony whispered into Rose's ear she had better be prepared for him to do it many more times, because she had a delicious looking rump.

Donna turned around and said, "Do you know we can hear you."

Rose looked at her and asked, "Do we do anything different than he does every night with you?

Donna replied, "I do not know. You would have to videotape your lovemaking sessions so we could analyze them. Then we could compare what you do, with what we do, and see who is more advanced."

Anthony, Donna and Vincent looked at Rose as if she had turned into a three headed monster, when she replied, "Okay!"

Anthony laughed at the two of them. "Antonia has had quite an effect on your mother. She has become quite the liberated woman of late."

Vincent cheered, "Way to go, mom!"

Anthony took him by the shoulder and said, "You have no idea son, you have no idea."

Donna blushed red, and Rose glowed like the bright pink flowers she held. They got into their limousine and headed to Brooklyn and their homes, under the watchful eye of the men, and women, of the FBI. Anthony Caruso was never out of their site, and neither was Don Alberto DiAngiolla. They were suspected of bringing the drugs in the olive oil cans into the country. Actually, the FBI knew they were involved in bringing the cocaine into the country in those cans, they just could not prove. They did not know where it went, when it left the docks; how it was dispersed; how they disposed of the metal; or how they disposed of the oil. They just knew that these two men were involved; they felt it in the marrow of their bones.

However, these two men did not vary their routines one iota over the past few months. They acted like angels. They did not go to their secret meeting places. They dined openly with their families, in public restaurants that were hard to bug, but they knew no family business would take place, because women and children were there.

They especially watched Tony, while Rose was away. They thought for sure he would do something connected with the family's business, while she was in Italy. However, he was at home, almost every day and night. He did not use his house, or cellular phone, except when Rose called him, and those phone calls were not in code, they were in words of love. The FBI had hours and hours of tapes of these two talking to one another, and they had never heard them speaking to one another like this. Something had changed them, maybe it was the wedding of their son Vincent, and now the upcoming wedding of their daughter, that had rekindled the old flame, but they knew it would be easier to track them, because the way they were talking, they would be inseparable.

They verified their travel arrangements to Italy, for Antonia and Frank's wedding, to the smallest detail. Everything was in order, and on their return flight Vincent and Donna were going to be with them. However, the new baby would be staying with her parents, because she would be too young to fly. She would be staying with her grandparents, during the entire time they were in Italy. The four of them would be returning from the Milan to New York, one week after the wedding on the same aircraft. Everything looked normal, from their point of view.

On the evening of October 30, Donna went into labor and Tony, Rose, and Vincent piled into a car and drove her to the hospital. After six hours of labor, she delivered a bouncing baby girl, at 12:02 A.M. When Vincent and the grandparents entered her room, Donna was nursing her new daughter and said to Vincent, "Happy Halloween!"

Vincent looked at his new daughter and she was all orange. He looked at his mother, and asked, "Is that normal?"

Rose smiled at him and replied, "If you were that big and came out of an opening that small, you would be a little discolored yourself. Why don't you kiss your wife, and thank her for all the pain and discomfort you caused her. Then you two should think of a name for our grandchild, and don't you dare call her 'Pumpkin'."

Vincent did as he was told and asked Donna if she had made up her mind on the name for the baby.

She said she had, if it was all right with his mom.

Rose asked, "What was the name?"

Donna said, "I would like to name her after my mother, and you. I would like her name to be 'Annarosa.'"

"Donna, I think that is a beautiful name, for a beautiful little girl."

"Thank you, mom, I was hoping you would like it. Now I have 12 years to teach her to stay away from men, like her father."

Tony and Rose laughed loudly, as Vincent grabbed his heart and feigned a heart attack, and fell to the floor. While he was down there he said, "If it was not for me, Annarosa would not be here."

Tony looked down at his son. "If Don Alberto had not agreed to the match, Annarosa would be here, but you would not be here."

That thought sobered Vincent up very quickly. He stood up by his wife and said to her once more, "You are my one and only love. I will never stray from you, and you will never have anything to fear from me. However, God help the young man that lays a finger on our daughter."

The laughter in the room scared Annarosa, and she began to cry, for the first time. One day she would be told the story of her father's exploits, while he was in high school, and she would laugh at him. The funny part would be to watch his reaction, as he was trying to protect her from the young men who were pursuing her. He had at least 11 or 12 years to mull this over. It would darken his days, and torture his nights.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Subtext

Fate was going to get even Anthony Vincent Caruso, for his carousing ways. Over the next six years. He and Donna had four more daughters; all as strikingly beautiful as their mother, bringing their total to 5 beautiful girls. In the 9th year of their marriage, Donna got pregnant one more time, and gave him a gift that truly sealed their love for the rest of their married life. The doctors said it was triplets! There were no multiple births on his side of the family, or on hers. This had occurred naturally. When the doctor told them of this rarity, Vincent only asked one question, "Is there a boy in there?"

The doctor replied, "We cannot tell, yet. They are all huddled together, and it is crowded in there. We will probably have to do a Cesarean section to get them out, to make it easy on your wife."

Donna liked the sound of that, but she still had five more months before her due date and the thought of delivering three babies at one time, without the pain of laboring for hours, seemed delightful.

The doctors could not understand why they could not get a clear picture of her abdomen. The babies would not separate from one another. They just seem to huddle together like a ball, very comfortable in each other's arms, and not conjoined in any way the doctors could see. It was absolutely imperative that they operate to remove the babies. They were finally able to observe the sex of the babies; all girls. Vincent lamented that he now had a complete volleyball team, and no boy to carry on the family name.

The morning of the operation, he kissed Donna, before they put her under anesthesia, and went into the waiting area, where they brought in the newborn babies. Nearly one hour later, nurses started bringing in tiny babies, in their incubators, with name tags on them. The first one said, "Caruso girl 1, Caruso girl 2, and Caruso girl 3. He looked at his brand-new daughters and smiled at all of them, as he waited for the doctor to come out and tell him how Donna was doing. 20 minutes later the doctor did come out and told him that he could go to see his wife. Vincent walked into her room. She was sitting up and smiling at him. She was holding something close to her under a white blanket. He could not make out what it was. As he bent down to kiss her, she lowered the blanket and he saw a blue bonnet, on a very tiny baby.

Donna said to him, "Surprise daddy!"

Vincent stood there in shock. "Where did you get this one," he asked her?

Donna laughed at him. "The same place the other three were."

The doctor said from behind him, that this was the reason we could not get a good picture from her abdomen. There were four of those little tykes in her belly and not three. We could not pick up the heartbeat, because they were so close together, and the way they wrapped themselves around each other was amazing, I had never seen anything like it. Even when I started taking them out of her womb, they would not let go of one another. I have a feeling that they will have an extraordinarily close bond for the rest of their lives."

Vincent asked the doctor, "I will assume that she came out last?"

The doctor smiled and said, "The girls would not have it any other way."

"Oh God, this poor girl is in trouble."

Donna laughed again. "Vincent, this is not a little girl. Say hello to your son."

Vincent did not believe his ears. His eyes opened wide. He saw the blue hat on the baby's head, but he did not take the hint. He turned to the doctor and said, "Are you sure?"

The doctor smiled, "The parts are in the right place."

He turned back to his wife, and asked, "Donna, may I hold him?"

"As long as you promise not to drop him, Vincent, he is very small and you must protect his head, at all times."

"I have carried all our other children. I have only dropped them once or twice, but never as a baby."

Donna handed Vincent his son very carefully, and watched as his grin grew wider and wider. Vincent said, "Hello, Anthony Vincent Caruso Junior. Welcome to Brooklyn, your new home. It is not as comfortable as the place you just came from, but it is less crowded. I will try to protect you from your eight sisters, and your mother, so they do not make you wear dresses, and makeup. However, I cannot do that while I am working. You will start karate lessons as soon as you can walk. That should help you keep them at a safe distance from you."

"Vincent that was a means hearted statement. The girls are going to dote on him. They will love him as much as you and I do."

"Yes, Donna, they will love him. They will put their makeup on him, and put him in their dresses, as soon as we have our backs turned. They will take pictures of him with their cameras. When he gets older, they will blackmail him with them. That is not going to happen to MY son."

"I will make you a promise Vincent; OUR son will not have that problem, ever."

End Subtext

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Rose and Donna applauded, while Tony laughed at his son. He asked Vincent how many more times he would ask Annarosa out if she did not go home with him.

"None."

"I rest my case Vincent. If all you are interested in is getting laid, the good-looking ones, the ones with brains are going to leave you behind. How you got Donna is beyond me. You are the luckiest man I have ever met."

Donna said to Tony, "He was very persuasive dad. Nearly every girl in school talked about him, and I only wanted to find out what it was about him that was so good. I was the lucky one, I got pregnant. It could have been disastrous, not only if my uncle did not approve, but if you did not approve either."

"Well, we are beyond that point now, and you have a beautiful daughter, and Don Alberto and I have a gorgeous granddaughter to spoil rotten.

That reminds me, you have some phone calls to make, Vincent, and your wife needs to rest. I will get the nurse to take the baby and your mother and I will leave you two alone. We will make sure your house is ready for the baby, and that it is fully stocked with groceries.

As they left the hospital, Tony said hello to the federal agents, who were watching him. He told them that it was a beautiful girl, and that her name was Annarosa.

The lead agent replied that they already had that information and congratulated him on his first grandchild.

Rose smiled at them and waved. She had a secret she could not share with her husband, even though she wanted to desperately. Frank had warned her of the listening devices that were planted all over her house, in the cars that her husband rode in, and the places he visited frequently. So, she kept as quiet as a church mouse, because she did not want to see her husband in jail. He had done many terrible things in his life to other people, but never to her, his children, or his extended family. Now, after 22 years, their love had blossomed again, and she would be damned if the government would take that away from her. She would not even tell her confessor about the things she knew of her husband's business, because that was between Anthony and God. She had a duty to her husband, and she would fulfill that duty to her dying day. She decided that it was time to clean the house for Thanksgiving; a very thorough cleaning. She called a cousin of Anthony, from the Italian meat market she used. She asked him to send eight or 10 women from his business, that he trusted because she wanted to do a cleaning of her house for Thanksgiving, including "all her electronic equipment."

The cousin immediately picked up on what Rose was saying and said he would send the best he had.

It was arranged for Antonia and the baby to spend one more day in the hospital so that the cleaning crew could do their house first, to allay any suspicion on the part of the FBI watching both houses. By the time they were finished, they verified there were no bugs in Vincent's home, and left it in pristine condition.